


An Archive of My Own

by flashwitch



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: A collection of shorts, Canon character deaths, Canon-Typical Violence, Character studies, Ficlets, Spoilers for the magnus archives
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:22:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22257904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flashwitch/pseuds/flashwitch
Summary: A collection of short ficlets in the Magnus Archives universe. Some charater studies, some episode tags.Spoilers for the Magnus Archives (right up to the season 4 finale, you have been warned!)
Relationships: Georgie Barker/Melanie King, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11





	1. The Buried

**Author's Note:**

> This is a collection of ficlets. Different relationships present in different chapters, different chapters have different issues, so watch the end of chapter notes for up to date warnings!

Dying is a bit shit, really. He hadn’t expected it to be fun. He wasn’t _stupid_.

It hurt more than he expected.

He could hear chaos around him. The explosion did not kill him immediately. He hoped his friends, his colleagues, the others, he hoped that they had gotten out. First he was very hot, he was burning, he was screaming. Then there was a great weight on him, all over. Holding him down.

He had never really been afraid of being buried alive. He knew it was a thing that people were afraid of, but it had never bothered him. But it hurt. It was heavy. He couldn’t see anything except darkness. He could feel the debris, the bricks, the other bodies? Pressing him down into the dirt.

He isn’t too hot anymore. He can vaguely feel the heat of flames licking around him, but he isn’t hot. He is cold, and getting colder. His legs aren’t really there anymore. Well, they’re still _there._ They’re still attached, but he can’t quite locate them. 

He can hear the fire crackling away, and he thinks _good_. He thinks _burn them all down._

He can’t catch his breath. His chest is wrong. It’s the wrong shape. It’s not… he tries to cough and can’t do that either.

Is fire a Fear? Burning to death is a horrific thing. It’s got to be something that people are afraid of, right? What makes the difference between a fear and a Fear?

All of this happens quickly. It can’t be more than a few minutes before his life bleeds out into the dirt floor. But his head is all over the place. He goes from worrying about Martin to thinking about death, to theorizing and philosophising. It’s weird.

He’s going to be a mystery. Well, Martin and Jon and Daisy and Basira, they would know what happened. But no one else would. His parents would have another lost son, disappearing with no reason or rhyme to it. Someone would joke about Tim Spooky who vanished. Or maybe the Archives would make some excuse, tell people he had been off on a research job and that he had been caught in the ‘gas explosion’. That kind of made sense.

He’s not sure why he was worrying about it. It wasn’t his problem. Not anymore.

He blinks the dirt away from his eyes. His face is covered in brick dust. Well, it’s covered with bricks too. He’s covered in bricks. He feels like laughing and he isn’t sure why.

Slowly, everything fades. The pain goes first. The pressure next.

He isn’t afraid.

He’d have to tell Martin…. He would have to…

He was… There was something he was going to say…

He just couldn’t quite think of what it was.


	2. The Stranger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She isn't Sasha anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings in the end notes.

Sasha had brought him tea on his first day. She had only been working there about a week. She had been hired by Elias personally in the break between archivists. She had brought him tea and they had sat awkwardly in the cafeteria and made small talk.

She probably wouldn’t have called them friends. Sasha’s friends were the sort of people who were kind and personable and always seemed to know the right thing to say. Just like Sasha in other words. Jon wasn’t like that. He liked her though. He enjoyed the time they spent together. They got tea together every so often, sometimes he walked her to her car, or she walked him to the Tube.

She wasn’t perfect, and he didn’t let his guilt tell him that she was. Her front teeth were a little crooked, her sense of humour was wicked and could occasionally edge into cruel without her realising (she always apologised though, when her tongue was sharp enough to cut), and she was a little too touchy feely for Jon’s taste. She would come in to his office with a file he wanted or a hot drink or with something to tell him and she would touch his shoulder or his arm or the small of his back if he was standing up.

He got used to it after a while. And he had noticed it had mostly stopped, but he’d put it down to her being traumatised. They had all been traumatised, it was natural to change after something like that.

Was any of this really her? Had she brought him tea? Had they gossiped about their co-workers? Had they looked out for each other despite rarely seeing each other away from the archives?

Was any of it real?

He thought it probably was. When he really concentrated, when he focussed in on his memories, some of them felt fuzzy around the edges, like feeling the space where your tooth used to be after an extraction. It feels new and strange and odd. Something about the pressure of your tongue on a place it’s never accessed before. Other memories felt solid, like a stair in the dark, real and present and there even if you can’t quite see it properly.

She had brought him tea. She was kind. They were not friends, but they were… or maybe they were. Maybe he just hadn't realised...

Jon had not had that much experience with friendship, at least not as a fully realised adult. He had had friends at school, allies formed in the way of all children forced to spend time together everyday. You made friends and you made enemies purely from that sense of being trapped together. He had friends at university. People whose floors he slept on after a night out, people who he crammed with for exams, people who sat in lectures with him and exchanged snide comments with him. But the last few years, everyone had moved on and moved away and he really hadn’t caught up with any of them.

She wasn't there anymore. He had her voice. Her _real_ voice. The only thing he could be sure of anymore. Her voice and the fact that he missed her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Canon character death, loneliness.


	3. The Web

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Basira reflects.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings in the end notes

Basira had never thought of herself as someone who did not act. It was one of her key personality traits actually, that she acted. She did things. She got information, she worked through it, and she acted on it. When she did step back, it was because she knew things were taken care of already.

But working at the Magnus Institute, it felt like she was constantly held back. That there were actions that needed to be taken, but for whatever reason she was unable to take them. Part of that was that she was unable to quit. Not just because of the threat hanging over her, but because she physically could not say the words ‘I quit’ and mean them.

And they all knew the Institute was evil. They knew that it represented one of the entities that wanted to destroy the world. They knew that it fed on people’s fear. They knew that being part of that was evil. But there was literally nothing they could do about it. This was not a problem Basira could reason out.

She had never felt helpless quite like this. She was caught, she thought smiled a little, in a web and she wasn’t going to get out. Not easily, maybe not ever.

She was used to solving problems. To being depended on. And she was depended on, sometimes she felt like the only voice of reason in the room, the only cool head. They needed her.

And sure, she could go along, come up with a plan to stop this or that apocalypse. But on a grander scale, she was completely useless.

It was not a feeling she enjoyed.

Still, that was probably the point, wasn’t it? The being that ran this place -not Elias, the thing in control of Elias- probably got off on its minions feeling uncomfortable. Discomfort was related to fear, after all.

She just had to get used to it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Themes of helplessness and entrapment


	4. The Eye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Melanie made the right decision. She knows this. She does not always believe it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Georgie/Melanie. 
> 
> Warnings in the chapter end notes.

Can you be afraid of the dark if you cannot see the light?

Melanie isn’t sure. She is definitely scared. She doesn’t belong to the Eye, the Beholder, the Ceaseless Watcher, anymore. She knows it, deep in her bones (she’s almost sure). But she’s afraid she might belong to someone else.

She lives in the darkness now. And it became comfortable almost worryingly fast. Part of that, she thought, was because it was her choice. She had made the decision. She had followed through. That’s all there was to it. She was blind now. It was her reality. There was nothing to be afraid of.

Was blindness really darkness though? Was she in Mr Pitch’s domain? Or was it something different, something separate? Part of the fear of the dark is the fear of not seeing, and she wasn’t afraid of either thing anymore. The darkness meant nothing to her and not seeing was her strength, her choice, her freedom.

But wasn’t that the point? The entities didn’t recruit people who feared them, they recruited people who embraced them. And she had embraced this.

So was she doomed to be an extension of one fear or another or was she finally, actually free? Would she even know one way or the other?

Did it matter? She thought it did, but she wasn’t sure if the fact that she thought that mattered either.

She should stop thinking about this.

She should stop thinking about all of it. She thought that maybe thinking about things like that could invite them in.

Georgie was out. She didn’t like leaving Melanie alone yet, but sometimes she had to. Melanie didn’t mind, she was ok at navigating around the apartment now, counting her steps and trailing her hand against the wall. She had tripped over the Admiral more than once though. It’s hard, being alone for a long time with nothing to do. She listens to podcasts sometimes, but today her head is just not in the right space. So instead, she sat in the bedroom in silence and let her thoughts run away with her.

It… probably wasn’t good.

She is going to stop thinking about this now. She is going to think about other things, like the shape Georgie’s hand in hers, the Admiral purring on her chest, the taste of Georgie’s lips… and other things. Better things. Because this is. It is better. The weight that has been living in her chest is gone.

And she’s OK.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Canon self mutilation (not shown but thought about), eye trauma


	5. The Becoming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elias thinks about the human side of things.

There was a tape recorder in his cell.

It had not been there moments earlier. He had looked away for a second, and there it suddenly was. 

It was always interesting how different people manifested. There was this assumption that everyone who was an avatar of the same Entity would have the same abilities. And that was true, to some extent. They were all connected and there were certain base powers that every avatar of the same fear shared. Every avatar of the Spiral for example, they all opened doors, they all had access to the twisting and the confusion.

But every human is a little bit different. And they all bring a little bit of their own to the table. That’s why it was so interesting watching Jon Become. In a lot of ways he was like Gertrude. Unflinching in the search for answers, an instinct and an intuition for the truth, a way of connecting with the statements and those who made them. But there was something about him. Elias wasn’t sure if it was just Jon himself or if it was part of his being connected to so many powers. Either way made sense, to an extent, but Elias was inclined to believe it was Jon himself.

Jon had always had this desperation that lived just beneath his skin. A need to matter. A need to be seen and acknowledged. A need to be remembered, to exist. To be witnessed. That’s why he made the recorders. That’s why they appeared whenever he needed them to, that’s why they listened for the things that Jon was interested in, rather than just sticking to the statements themselves.

Gertrude had never had that. Even knowing she was the Archivist, she had never seen herself as someone to be seen and remembered, rather she saw herself as a witness. In fact, now that he was thinking about it, it wouldn’t have surprised him if an aspect of Gertrude had been the ability to turn eyes away. She always did like to think of herself as some kind of external force, observing, interfering when necessary, but not really part of the story.

She was wrong of course. She was as tied to this as he was, as Jon was, as they all were. It was foolish to think differently.

Elias turned the tape recorder over in his hands, feeling the slight vibration and listening to the soft fuzz of static that said it was on and listening. Enough of this. Enough dwelling on things that have no significance in the grand scheme of things. 

Jon was awake.

Things were back in motion.


	6. The Corruption

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon is in over his head and he is very aware of that, thank you very much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings in the chapter end notes.

_I’m in too deep and I’m trying to keep up above in my head instead of going under, instead of going under..._

Jon turned off the radio with a swift stab at the power switch. That was quite enough of that, thank you very much. Basira gave Jon a look. They were sitting together, files and cups of coffee between them, the radio a little portable one. Jon wasn't sure where Basira had found it. 

“Why don’t you just go to your office?” she said. It was a sensible suggestion really -he had been irritable all day, and he knew he was beginning to get on her nerves- but he somehow did not want to. She didn't say that she was uncomfortable, that she had been humouring him, that she was wary and watchful, that she wasn't sure if he was human enough to be her friend. She didn't say any of that, but he could tell.

He really could tell.

Maybe he would be better off on his own.

He stood up, without a word, and headed to his office.

He didn’t want to be on his own really, was the thing. But he didn’t want to be with anyone else either. It feels like something scratching at his skin sometimes when they’re all there, talking and thinking and existing.

He can’t stop thinking about Melanie. About her eyes.

It takes him a little while to place what he is feeling. Jealousy. Jealously, of all things. He shook his head wryly at himself. He was being ridiculous. She was...

She was out. She was safe. She was with Georgie. He was none of those things.

The idea of cutting out his eyes was anathema to him. It seemed impossible. Not because he was afraid of being blind, or because he saw blindness as being something lesser. Because _so much_ of him was connected to seeing, to watching, to beholding. He was part of the Eye. He was the Archivist. He was not entirely human anymore.

That was the thing. He was stuck. Cutting out his eyes seemed impossible because it... well it probably was impossible for him. He tried picturing it. Raising a scalpel and driving it into his pupil. Something stopped his hand, even in his imagination. He was Not Allowed.

He ran a hand through his hair.

He’d known it was getting worse. That he was changing. He had been eating people’s trauma, just random people on the street, going up to them and eating their trauma. That was not a normal thing to do. That was not a human thing to do.

But the idea that he would never be able to leave…

It was terrifying. It was also somehow enticing. If this was who he was, if he was inexorably tied to the Eye, if he was no longer human, was he still bound by that morality? Was humanity all that great, actually? Wasn’t this better?

He shook his head. He thought about Jane Prentiss. She had been terrified. He had been terrified too, when it had first started. But at some point, that had changed for her. She had accepted her new self completely, she had accepted her new role, it had infected every part of her.

Was he at that tipping point? It would be so easy to stop caring, to let himself fall into it, to eat who he wanted, do what he wanted. But it would be wrong, wouldn’t it? Of course it would.

It would be wrong.

It would be _wrong_.

He stops thinking about Jane Prentiss. Instead he thinks about Martin.

The look on Martin’s face, the concern he felt, when he realise what Jon was doing. How betrayed he would feel if Jon went fully over to the dark side.

Maybe he was thinking too much. That was his problem a lot of the time. Too much thinking.

He picked up the tape recorder sitting on his desk and hit record.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: thoughts of self harm, mention of eye trauma. Kind of body horror?


	7. The Ceaseless Watcher

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elias watches.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jon/Martin. Spoilers for the S4 finale.

There they were.

They were on a train. The carriage was nearly empty, except for the two of them and a businessman who had missed the earlier train following a call from his mother. She had dementia, and he spent half an hour reassuring her that the woman in her kitchen meant her no harm, that she was a carer, there to help her, and by the time she was happy, he was very late for work. But other than him, it was just Martin and Jon.

Their hands tangled together, Jon’s head on Martin’s shoulder.

The countryside passed in a blur, green and grey, as they headed north. It was a fair plan, but a naïve one. It was easy to forget, with all they had been through, that they were both still relatively new at all this. Running away and hiding from an all seeing being was a plan full of childish hope and no real thought. They were acting on impulse and it would get them killed if they weren’t careful. It was hard not be irritated with them. He couldn’t help but feel fond of them, the way a hunter grows fond of his dog or the way people find themselves giving their automatic vacuums names. Or even the farmer who finds he has a fondness for his pigs. They were tools, yes, but he had done his best to care for them, in his own way, and there is a connection that comes from time spent together, even if you know you could never really be friends. And it never did stop the farmer sending them to slaughter.

Martin looked exactly like himself, even after everything. He was oddly unshakable and had never really been given enough credit for that. He was wearing a thick jumper that looked hand knitted in a dark rich green, and it emphasised the softness - the loose curls and general plumpness, the kind eyes- that so many people took for weakness. It was not weakness of course, it was a choice, and the softness hid a core of steel. Martin chose to be kind. He chose to make bonds with the people around him. He chose to keep trying in face of overwhelming challenges. And all that must be respected, if not understood.

Jon, on the other hand, looked tired. He was leaning into Martin and it was his hand that had first sought contact. He looked… hungry. He had always been a thin man, stretched out and angular, but his skin seemed a little thinner, his bones sticking out a little further, the rings beneath his eyes a little darker. It was to be expected. He had pushed himself in his last encounter and had not really had time yet to recover. And he had not let himself feed his need to watch, to see, to _know._ Becoming, the way Jon was, it did things to you.

The two of them made an odd couple. They didn’t seem to match. If you saw them walking down the street together or sitting there on the train, you wouldn’t have thought they were together unless you saw how desperately their hands clung. You would have thought they were ships passing in the night, or people forced to work together. You would never have thought they were what they are to each other. Whatever they were to each other.

They were holding hands.

Martin, awake, looked down as Jon pressed closer in to his side. He smiled and pressed a kiss to one of the grey streaks in Jon’s hair.

Ah.

Jonah turned his Eye away.

Let them have this, he thought, an odd feeling in his chest. Let them have the quiet and the cows outside the window and hands being held. Let them be soft. It would all end the same way. It was nearly done now, there was no stopping it. He was sure. Almost sure. Jon would do as he was meant to, and everything would change. It would all change.

After all, they would be afraid soon enough. He could wait.

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Canon character death, focus on a character as they die, buried alive, burns,


End file.
